Privacy
Fred E. Foldvary — The
Ultimate Tax Reform:
Public Revenue from Land Rent
Without audits, bank account seizures, and fear-inspiring letters from the
IRS requesting information or additional payments or imposing interest
and penalties, the opportunity for tyranny would greatly diminish, if not
entirely
disappear. Evasion being impossible, there would be no need or excuse for
any inquisitive state investigators of fraud. Land value taxation also involves
less invasion of privacy than taxing the whole property, since land value
assessors
do not need to enter the property to assess it. They don’t assess
the new pipes, the expanded wiring, the renovated kitchen, or the new cottage
in
the back. ... read the whole document
Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Think of a tax which both assesses itself and collects itself, which burdens
no one, which is paid voluntarily, and only by those who do so for their
own profit or other advantage. Compare this with our present system of taxes,
which
everyone despises, which can be collected in full only from the very scrupulous
and from the helpless, from trust funds of widows and orphans, or from
estates which lie naked before the tax gatherer on the records of court;
a system which
drives men of property from state to state and town to town in flight from
the assessor, and well-nigh forces many worthy citizens to practices of
evasion which must make it hard for them to look into their own mirrors during
the
season for "Correction of Assessments;" there can be but one
verdict upon such comparison. ... read the whole article
Karl Williams: Social Justice In Australia:
INTRODUCTORY KIT
Firstly, in a Geonomic
society, the experience of real liberty would
pervade everything. For citizens would not be beholden to the
government to supply it all sorts of financial and personal information
demanded by the tax system. Instead of having to abide by a multitude
of tax requirements, the land you occupy would simply be assessed by
professional assessors. This would only occur once a year, and the
assessors would not even need to step onto your property because it
would only be your land and not the improvements that would be assessed.
BEGONE!
Gone are the armies of tax accountants, tax lawyers and tax
department
bureaucrats. Gone are the inefficiencies of speculation, the black
economy and its attendant criminal elements. Gone is the pool of
unemployed and the cost of supporting it (much more on this later).
Gone are many of the social problems arising from unemployment,
poverty, despair arising from hopelessness, and resentment resulting
from great inequities of wealth. And because of LVT and other eco-taxes
apply to all of the Global Commons, we'll live on a much healthier
planet - and so will our children.
Instead, in steps an inconceivable prosperity resulting from a
dynamic
economy that encourages productivity, discourages speculation, is not
hampered by high welfare needs, abolishes privilege, and doesn't
undersell our natural environment. It is estimated that a typical
household will have a true disposable income (after all taxes) often
double that of the current system, and that the average business will
earn trading profits after tax/rent considerably greater (refer to the
section "What's in it for me?"). Read the entire article
Karl Williams: Social
Justice In Australia: INTERMEDIATE KIT
MONITOR
THE PLANET, NOT THE PEOPLE!
Remember too that LVT eliminates the government surveillance
over
people, their activities and their assets. What LVT and other
conventional eco-taxes does do is to monitor Our One Earth as any
responsible form of stewardship should, ensuring our scarce natural
resources are not polluted, wasted, undersold or privately
misappropriated.
The bottom line of our present economic system is that not everything which counts (our Earth) can
be counted (in $ terms), and not everything that can be counted
("progress") counts. Presently, it's the market which determines the "worth" of,
say, our water resources, our genetic integrity or the last remaining habitat
of
an endangered species. The only moderating factor to this is the blunt
instrument of occasional government intervention, when public outcry
forces it to save what's left of our (and future generations') Global
Commons.
But there is a means of determining the worth of all of these
intangible benefits - patches of the Global Commons which confer
aesthetic, recreational, life-enhancing, spiritual, climate-preserving,
biodiversity-saving benefits. ...
We all-too-meekly accept being legally robbed of the fruits of
labour
and capital, because we have been stooged into believing that there is
no other way to pay for responsible government expenditure. Having
established that beachhead, our governments then steadily make further
inroads into earned income as well as into other human rights. After
having been dispossessed of our share of the Global Commons, it would
seem pretty inconsequential to complain about taxation eroding privacy,
but it's worth looking into.
WADING THROUGH THE MIRE
But just how trifling is the fact that a mass of laws, too many
and
complex for anyone to fully get a handle on, forces us to account for
much of our "personal" activities? Our private lives are open to
scrutiny following all sorts of disclosure. "But we have to pay our
taxes," Peabody bleats as he obediently discloses every detail the tax
system demands of his earnings, assets and investments. "We don't need
to understand all this tax legislation," the dutiful drone on, "as we
can simply employ accountants and sometimes tax lawyers to do it for
us." "It's part of our duty as responsible citizens," Elroy explains as
he files away his complete audit trails of financial transactions & statements
required for tax purposes.
And we have to obey the law, don't we? The Tax Commissioner has
powers
of investigation in some circumstances greater than the police - in
fact he is the law, with masses of legislation to support him and his
sleuths. But as he's unlikely to kick in our bedroom door in the middle
of the night, his other low-key invasions of privacy don't get much of
a mention in the media.
And now GST dumps on us the onus and cost of collecting it. And
the
massive compliance costs of Business Activity Statements alone now
display all-too-clearly the time and resources spent by taxpayers that
would otherwise go into production.
BIG BENEFACTOR, NOT BIG BROTHER
While humans are being
closely monitored, natural resources are not - the inverse of Geonomics.
Only recently have we been getting some laws prohibiting or restricting
certain types of pollution, but land and other natural resources are
still being treated as mere commodities liable to being owned outright
and treated as truly private private property. But natural resources
don't behave as ordinary commodities, because many of them are scarce
and some are necessary for human existence. At least we can be thankful
that sunlight is abundant and renewable, for if it could be limited
then someone would try to bottle it up and make a fortune on it.
Geonomics does not intrude into people's lives. Unlike the
current
assessors of misguided property tax, LVT assessors would never need to
inspect and assess buildings and improvements, and rarely if ever would
they need to set foot on the land itself, hence assuring complete
privacy for most people. But Geonomics would monitor the direct usage
of natural resources in order to determine the full and fair LVT and
resource rentals. Usage of this sort obviously should not be kept
private. ... Read the
entire article
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